One of the most awkward social interactions I regularly experience is visiting a friend's home and suffering the "Dude you GOTTA see this YouTube clip" moment, where I am forced to stand awkwardly behind and to the side of their chair, peer at the screen they're clicking on, and pretend to be amused by a 90-second animation of a goddamn squirrel fighting Darth Vader or whatever.

The way we use our homes and interact with people in them is now very different than the way people used their homes 10, 20, 50 years ago. Nowadays most everyone has some form of "home office," even if it's just a small desk with a laptop on it, where aforementioned YouTube moments are inflicted on guests, and lately I'm seeing more homes that lack televisions altogether (as does mine).

I bring this up to ask you: Given our modern style of living, if you had to write a handbook for designing the interior of the modern-day home, what rules would you lay down?

For some inspiration, check out "Easier Living, by Design." It's an article by Alexandra Lange in the New York Times that covers industrial designers Mary and Russel Wright's book from 1950, "Guide to Easier Living," which breaks down the Wrights' takes on what to fill your house with and how to arrange it.

Writes Lange,

...The Wrights' work was revolutionary at the time: not only did they simplify our plates and mugs, chairs and cabinets, but they simplified the way we were to live and work in our homes. Many other designers and manufacturers created modern design for the home in the 1950s, but few showed how to use it with the detail and multimedia platform the Wrights used so effectively. Without the tools for contemporary life they and others provided, our lives today would run very differently. But have we truly achieved the easier living that the Wrights preached?

To a degree, yeah, I guess. But in everyone's home office there should at least be a dedicated chair for YouTube-clip inflictees, so we don't have to suffer on our feet.